Content Warning: This article contains brief mention of sexual assault.
Administrators of the “Oberlin Alumni Digital Community” Facebook group removed five alumni from the group last week for “abusive language” following the establishment of new community guidelines ratified Sept. 12.
“When the Alumni Association took over the Digital Community group last week, a number of alumni, myself included, began criticizing the move,” Robert Hayes, a former Oberlin student, said in an email to the Review.
Hayes is the creator of an alternative to the Facebook group, the “Uncensored Unofficial Oberlin Alumni Discussion Group,” and was one of five members banned the day the new guidelines were established.
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In May 2016, as Donald Trump’s campaign snowballed into a force of nature, a quiet conversation at the Kensington Wine Rooms between George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor to the campaign, and Australian diplomat Alexander Downer took on the distinct scent of a smoking gun. Having overindulged in the establishment’s titular offering, Papadopoulos mentioned to Downer that Joseph Mifsud — a professor with connections to Russia — had indicated that the foreign government had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, instigating a push to connect Trump to Russian efforts to discredit the Democratic candidate. Downer was not the confidant Papadopoulos may have expected, and provided the tip that would kick off a clandes...

Facebook’s responsibility to regulate fake news on its site, particularly the false stories that gained traction during the election cycle, has sparked national debate about what role the platform should play in politics. While the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has distanced himself from the popular theory that Facebook could have significantly swayed voters, the bottom line is that if his company profits from fake news sources, then it is also responsible for flagging them.
A BuzzFeed News analysis shows that the “20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyper partisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions and comments on Facebook.” Conversely, “within the same time period, the...